As the STOATs got closer, Remington spent more time studying for them. It seemed a little silly, since her grades were nearly perfect already, but her place in upper year classes was dependent upon her scoring well. This led to spending more time in the library when she could. Drew had found her asleep at least once after a long day of studying. She’d fallen asleep with her cheek pressed against her notes, and the ink had transferred to her skin during her accidental nap. Drew didn’t point this out (probably because he thought it was funny, and she didn’t blame him), but he did ask if she was okay and made sure she took fun breaks. He was such a good friend.

She studied for Defense the least of all her classes. Since they had their own club going on, Remington felt pretty versed in the material beyond their current level. Professor Embers was weird but the curriculum she used was pretty self-explanatory. Even though she wouldn’t be writing the test or creating the practical, it seemed likely that the curriculum she followed would cover the material well enough.

It was weird to have such a full class, even for Professor Embers. She was Drew’s aunt, which always made Remington wonder what holidays looked like. They had such a big family; it had to be an entertaining time. She doubted that anything involving the blonde and Kit could possibly be boring. Anyway, Remington found a spot on the floor to sit pretty close to the front. It wasn’t as easy as usual, since there were so many students, and it was especially difficult to set up a proper note taking space on the floor, but the Draco managed alright. Since the class was in the Practical Lab, she substituted a skirt for comfortable jeans and wore a white tank top with a loose long sleeved flannel button up over that. Her bow that held her curls away from her brown eyes matched the flannel pattern and changed colors every so often.

Remington knew that boggarts were going to be on the test. Everyone she’d asked who had taken their STOATs said it came up on the practical and on the written. Professor Embers only confirmed it. She’d read a bit about boggarts and had a pretty good idea what hers would be. She knew how to make it funny – even though it would never, ever be funny if it happened in real life – so she was genuinely looking forward to seeing if she was right. In a slightly morbid way, it would be interesting to see what other fears manifested in the classroom, too. She wasn’t a gossipy person like Kit or other people in the school, but even she couldn’t hide her curiosity.

There were snakes, weirdly complicated older students seeing other older students as their boggarts, a big bright light. It was just a whole bunch of stuff. Remington found it absolutely fascinating how much variety there was in the room right now.

Teal Rosse, a Draco the year above her, was next to face the creature. Remington blinked a few times as the boggart shape shifted, and it took her brain a moment to run through the catalogue of information her brain liked to log away. After a moment or two, she landed on the right name: Teal was afraid of lethifolds. Remington could totally understand that. From what she’d read about them, they were really scary! She started to wonder what could have made Teal specifically afraid of that creature, since most fears tended to spring from personal experiences and traumas, but she didn’t get enough time to delve down that rabbit trail. Teal was freaking out, and Professor Embers wasn’t doing a thing!

The dark skinned girl looked back and forth between their seemingly oblivious professor and the escalating panic that Teal was exhibiting before deciding to take action. Remington sped to the front of the line and placed herself between Teal and the lethifold. She held her wand at the ready and watched the boggart twitch and change into exactly what she expected.

The sound of gunshots made her jump and the flashing blue and red lights in front of her, accompanied by a police siren made it feel like her heart was traveling from her chest into her throat. It was only the lights and the sounds, which surprised her a little. She at least imagined there would be a body there, maybe her dad or something. She had too many family members, so maybe the boggart just had a hard time picking. Remington thought picking her dad would have been obvious; he’d been stopped at least once by police with her in the car and it was the scariest moment of her life. The cop said it was for not using a turn signal when he definitely had, but her dad seemed very practiced at dealing with unfair police treatment and luckily everything went okay.

Instead of letting the fears get to her and give the boggart more to work with or a chance to escalate, Remington squeezed her wand tightly. “Riddikulus!” Her voice only wavered slightly, but her resolve was sound, and the boggart changed. The siren was replaced by the Six Flags theme and the colors changed to disco lights. She smiled and then turned her back, offering her hand to Teal. “Are you okay? It’s gone now. It’s not gonna hurt you.”

Teal Rosse didn’t want to deal with a boggart. Teal didn’t know what her worst fear was, but she sure did not want to find out in front of most of the school. What could her boggart be? Bees? Bees... more

Despite being frightened by the boggart, Teal wanted to pretend she wasn’t. That was okay; Remington wouldn’t make her admit to things she didn’t want to say. Her best friend was Dade Farnon. The... more